Screams of the mind
by pamy
Summary: They always scream in the end, when it's all over, when he loses, and he lets them. He makes them scream. Written for the scream challenge on doctor who contest.


**Don't own anything.**

* * *

He never sleeps, he can't, he _won't. _

If he really wanted to he _could _sleep, close his eyes and drift off into his dreams. In the _before _– a very long time ago- he might have slept, but not anymore. He can't, won't, sleep because if he does, when he does, it won't be pleasant dreams that await him, it won't be happiness; his dreams will be filled with _could have beens _and _should have been _and _what was and never will be again. _

Because he can hear them then, then and always, screaming, begging, imploring, praying, the ones that came before.

The ones he lost.

In his head – his memories, his life – they _scream_, for mercy, for a better life, for him.

They always scream in the end, when it's over, when he loses – he always loses – and he lets them.

He makes them scream.

* * *

_'You can spend the rest of your life with me, but I can't spend the rest of mine with you. __I have to live on. Alone. That's the curse of the Time Lords.'_

* * *

He always hears them, loud or soft, in his mind, in his dreams.

They never stop, never, so he can't stop, he must always keep going. Because if he ever does stop, he has to focus on it, listen to the words of the ones that came before; so he doesn't stop, he makes new friends and lives, and when they are there it is better. He can smile, he can live, he can _ignore. _They stop screaming, or he stops listening, either way there's silence – or as close to silence as he can get.

Perhaps he thinks, or thinks he thinks, that that is why he loses himself when he is alone - in his darkest day's he believes that that is when he reaches his full potential.

The man he _should _be, the man he doesn't want to be.

But when he stops, if he stops, he can hear them, constantly in his head, like a recording of his life – of _their (his) _pain – with no mute button, no stopping, no pause.

Always and forever, constantly.

* * *

The Time Lords, burning forever, _never _scream.

Not in his memories, not in his head, not in his stories; they are in the end always silent. The silence of the Time Lords is for him a fate worse than screams, because he can't figure out _why _they don't scream.

Maybe they really didn't scream or maybe he's just lived too long and he has forgotten.

The reason doesn't really matter at the end.

* * *

_'The Doctor, the man who keeps running, never looking back. Because he dare not out of guilt.'_

* * *

When he is alone or they are silent, when he has no friends or they sleep, there are moments – sometimes long, sometimes short – where it overwhelms him and he almost, almost, feels like he's drowning. All that has happened, all that came before, all that he has lost and all that he has done, and the screams, the endless screams that never fade away, constant, unchanging.

In those moments, when it feels like he can never get up again, he likes to think of Martha.

Because Martha is _silence._

Because when her story ends, when her live on the Tardis comes to an end, there is no screaming nor begging, there's no _could have beens _or stories that are better forgotten. She leaves, head held high, makes her choice and leaves him behind, with her whole life in front of her.

So he likes to think of Martha, because Martha neither begs nor screams.

Martha just is.

* * *

_She thinks of him often and dreams of him at night, her Doctor, her friend. He's woven in the fabrics of her life and she could never let him go. She tells her children stories of a mad man in a blue box, of moons and witches, of human doctors and years that never were. She likes thinking about him, likes dreaming about him, she likes to remember a time when_ he _was what mattered the most. She knows now, now that she's all grown up, what she did not understand then: they were never meant to be more then temporary. _

_She likes to dream of it, those adventures, and when she wakes she is always smiling. _

_But in her nightmares, for those also exist, she doesn't dream of weeping angels or years that never were. _

_No in her nightmares, in her darkest moments, she always dreams of John Smith. She dreams of a man so full of life, so full of dreams, who looks at her crying, screaming, pleading, and begging. He always wants to know why he has to die, why he must leave this world, why he is not as important as the Doctor. She dreams of boys, laughing and making jokes, full of arrogance and life, who learn how to shoot and how to kill and cry when the scarecrows attack their school. She dreams of them, those small boys, on the battlefield not long thereafter, crying and sreaming. _

_In her dreams, filled with pleasure, the Doctor always, always smiles. _

_But in her nightmares John Smith and those boys always scream._

* * *

Rose is always falling, screaming and falling, in the void or in another life.

Sometimes, though not often, she's burning with light, bright light, crying as the universe screams in her head. Always crying, always screaming, always begging for something more. He doesn't like to think of her, falling and burning – the two images burn in his mind and intertwine until she's burning with light and falling in the darkness – he prefers to forget.

But he can't forget, never, for to forget the pain would mean to forget the good.

He thinks of her, burning with fire, stopping a war and bringing life, he thinks of her living on another world, with a family and a life, and – hopefully – happiness. In his best moments, when his friends smile at him, he can remember her smiling back, or living her life over there.

But in the darkness she's always falling, burning with light, as the universe screams in her head.

* * *

_There are times that Rose looks at the stars and wants to scream. _

_She wants to scream and beg for answers, she wants to know why this was her ending, why this was her destiny. Now that she's older, grown up and mature, she understands what he could never tell her. She could not have stayed with him forever, perhaps with time she would not have wanted to – those are the things she'll never know. But she wonders why it had to be this, this life, this future, this world. _

_Why could she not just go home? Why was she doomed to live in a world not her own?_

_She wants to scream for those she left behind, for the pain she lives. She wants to scream for the Doctor – her first and second – whome she lost. She wants to scream for the friends she'll never meet again, for the family that is now lost, for the people she once knew but must forget her. She's forever the girl in the wrong world, with the wrong friends and the wrong family – with a father so much like her own and yet not the man who gave up his life for hers. _

_Forever the girl dead and missing in her real home and trapped in the wrong world. _

_And she wants to scream, but it will do her no good, so she stares at the stars in silence._

* * *

Jenny doesn't scream either, like the Time Lords before her, her ending is wrapped in silence.

Jenny is love and happiness, laughter and running, she's soldier and love in one and in the end she's whispers and silence.

* * *

_'They leave. Because they should or because they find someone else. And some of them, some of them…forget me. I suppose in the end they break my heart._

* * *

Donna is screams and silence, begs and whispers, cries and pleas.

And then nothing.

For her the story doesn't end, for her the story never begins, she's never the bride, never the friend, never the Doctor – Donna. She could never be what never was and must always be wrapped in nothingness, in silence, in forgetfulness. She must forget, she does forget, she never was and yet for him she was.

She's the friend who never was but meant so much.

She's the friend begging and crying, imploring and screaming. Burning up, like Rose before her, but from the inside out. And he can hear, louder than the others, screaming and asking _why. _He cries too then, then and forever, wondering why that was something that couldn't be.

Donna is screams and forgetfulness. Nothing and everything.

* * *

_Donna never screams, begs, cries or remembers. _

_She can't and never will, but sometimes she _almost_ remembers, almost knows. There are times she looks at something, or sees a movie and she thinks that is what I saw. But the thought is fleeting gone before she knows it and she is left with emptiness in her heart, something she can never explain. _

_She dreams of him sometimes. _

_She dreams and never remembers, wakes crying from nightmares she cannot understand. She screams in silence, wondering what she is missing, what she can never know._

* * *

_'Save him. You save everyone. You always do. That's what you do.'_

_'Not always. I'm sorry.'_

_'Then what is the point of you?'_

* * *

Jack is defiant in his silence at the end.

Head held high, arms wide, staring into the eyes of the Dalek. For him, for years, forever, until the end of Jack's life – which may never come – it's his words, his parting words that scream in his head. That burn in his mind.

_'Never doubted him, never will.'_

He shouldn't, oh how he shouldn't have, he should have doubted the coward before him. Should have doubted the words that were spoken and the ones that were not, he should have run when he had the change. But he did not, he would, because he believed, because he cared. He'd stood in defiance of the Daleks and died and in his mind, despite his silence, he's always screaming in agony.

Screaming as he dies, screaming as he wakes, and screaming as he returns.

He screams because he can never leave.

* * *

_There are times, though he denies it, that he hates the Doctor. _

_At first when he landed, when he found himself trapped and alone, he figured it didn't matter. He was more afraid in those times of never seeing them again. And when he discovered he could not die he had rejoiced in the knowledge he would one day meet them again. He had not understood, not known, what it meant, what he would feel. _

_In those moments he hates the Doctor, hates what he has done to him. _

_And he loves him too, it's impossible not to, but often he thinks of Daleks and spaceships and he wishes that first death had been his only death. But he never screams, never begs, and never cries. He thinks, at times, that should he start he would never be able to stop, never be able to do something else. _

_But when he reads her name on the list, the one he's waited all those years for and realizes what he has lost then he screams. _

_He screams and begs, throws papers around and destroyes his furniture. _

_He screams for what was and could never be again. He screams for what is lost._

* * *

_'What happened to the other people who travelled with you?'_

_'Some left me. Some got left behind. And some…not many, but…some died. Not them, never them.'_

* * *

_He's never killed a man, he'd gone to war but he'd never killed a man. _

_He'd been proud of it, he would have done should it had been necessary, but he was proud of the fact that he never had. And then he met the Doctor, the wonderful Doctor, who showed him things beyond his comprehension. Who understood the things he did not. He'd loved him, cared for him, thought of him (almost) as the son he never had. _

_And he killed him, destroyed the man before him._

He'd never killed man, not before that day, and then he killed the one he should have saved.

_When he's alone, when the world around him fades, when he lies in his bed or stares at the stars, when he looks at Donna he screams. _

_Screams for the man that is now lost - though still out there in some form – screams for the granddaughter that could (should) have been. _

_Screams for the life he has lost and dreams that will never be._

* * *

And they scream, all of them, in his head, always, screaming, begging, imploring, and praying.

The ones he lost.

In his head – his memories, his life – they _scream_, for mercy, for a better life, for him.

* * *

But the Ponds, the Ponds don't scream.

They're together and in love, they are happy and have all they ever wanted. They would have stayed with him, if they could have, but in the end they chose each other. They are happy and together and so, he knows, they may cry but they do not scream.

At the end of that story, when it's all over, _he's_ the one who screams.

He's the one begging and imploring, crying and screaming, asking for something more. He's the one unwilling to give up, he's the one at the wrong end of the story; he's the one who loses. Because they have each other and he is left alone, he is left with nothing but the knowledge that he has truly lost. He is left knowing he will never see them again and he knows that Rivers end is fast approaching.

He begs and cries, he screams out loud.

But nothing changes.

* * *

'_Tell her a story. Tell her this is the story of Amelia Pond…'_

* * *

They always scream in the end, when it's over, when he loses – he always loses – and he lets them.

He makes them scream.

* * *

_'…And this is how it ends.'_


End file.
